So I just got back from seeing Iron Man 3 at my local cinema. And I'm not gonna lie, it rules. The actors are still great, injecting a whole lot of personality and heart into the script. The effects are as amazing as ever, and some of the stunts will leave you gaping with amazement or cringing with fear. And the story is fast-paced, full of intruige and on-the-seat tense at times. There are moments where you'll burst out laughing, especially at half of the stuff Tony says and the antics of the badly-behaved Mark 42 armour.
The film even manages to do the impossible by making Tony Stark, a man as fazed by danger as a rhino is by an irritated sparrow, seem vulnerable and desperate - he's dealing with a force that strikes from the shadows, never being where he wants it to be and never facing him personally like he wants. It responds to his overconfident threats by blowing up his house and stripping him of his suit, forcing him to use his head and think his way past the Extremis-dosed assassins trying to kill him. And the best sequence in the film has to be the arrival of the Iron Legion, all the suits Stark has built leaping in to help him save Pepper Potts and defeat the villain.
That said, however, I have a major problem with the film.
And that's it's villain - the Mandarin.
SPOILERS START HERE! HIGHLIGHT TEXT TO REVEAL SPOILERS!
We start off with this shadowy, robed figure seated on a throne, bearing his iconic ten rings and leading a veritable army of loyal terrorists. From the get-go, he launches into fantastic rants about his cause, comparing the ideals of America to a fortune cookie in a metaphor that sent chills down my spine. His identity is a mystery, he can strike at anything from anywhere and he has access to the hihgly-unstable Extremis virus, making his forces that much more dangerous. The sudden segue's into his video speeches, and indeed the videos themselves, are like something out of fucking Marble Hornets - genuinely scary in their imagery and coming right the fuck out of nowhere. You expect a massive showdown with this guy, the kind that rocks the socks of the movie-going audience.
And then Stark breaks into where the Mandarin is supposed to be, and it turns out the bearded figure on the TV is a mere puppet, bribed with cheap beer and women. The real Mandarin is Aldrich Killian, the leader of A.I.M. and Pepper Pott's old squeeze, who has a vaguely defined plan to kill the president and take over the U.S. Also something about the vice-president's daughter needing the Extremis to live, it wasn't very well explained. Killian injects himself with Extremis, becoming a fire-breathing monstrosity that Stark has to jump between various suits to defeat.
I honestly felt kind of cheated by this twist. Granted it was a very clever twist - for a while, Killian was thought to be working for the Mandarin - but I feel that Killian was a far weaker villain than the puppet he was controlling. His sole motivation for his actions was a classic case of rejection, going after Stark because Pepper chose him instead, and his attempts at giving villainous monologues came off as passive-agressive whinging. Granted, the way he transformed from the start of the film into a crippled nerd into a swathe, handsome jock was pretty cool, but in the end the character was nothing more than a) a big child throwing a temper tantrum and b) another scientific genius, which Tony has fought at least three times before.
The Mandarin puppet was a far more fascinating character, in my opinion. He had the air of a shadow, mysterious showman who had seemingly no end to the tricks he could pull, soliloquizing about the "lessons" he was trying to teach America, and felt like a far bigger and more credible threat than the scorned child Killian showed himself to be. His speeches felt like something from Sun Tzu's Art of War, the source of the character's philosophy, and the stuff he didn't only just make you despise him, but also geniunely wonder what was going on in his head. In the end, the reveal that he was a drunken British actor being paid by the word served to undermine all the character's intruige and felt like a complete cop-out. What's even sadder is that even though he commands the Ten Rings group from the first film and we get a glimpse of the rings he wears, the connection is never made and nothing comes from that little point.
Personally, I would have liked to have a Mandarin that was closer to the comics than what we got in the film. Say we have a man who, in the aftermath of losing his family to the Chitauri invasion in Avengers, finds the rings in the wreckage of a ship and discovers their mysterious powers. Blaming Tony for his losses and deciding America to be weak, he overtakes the Ten Rings group and uses the rings to convince people he is a sorceror, using fear and tricks to decieve people into doing his bidding. Blackmailing A.I.M. into handing over the Extremis formula, he uses it to create the super-soldiers he needs to send his ten "messages" to the government, whilst at the same time calling Iron Man out on failing to live up to what's expected of him. Killain commits suicide, unable to bear witness to his project becoming weaponized, and Stark has to confront the Mandarin when he strikes at Potts as a means to make Stark feel the same pain he felt when he lost his family. Cue showdown with Stark jumping between suits to combat the effects of Mandarin's rings.
Also, throwing A.I.M. in like that may have been a bit too much. Save it for the fourth film, guys - I know you can make M.O.D.O.K. cool!
SPOILERS END HERE!
So yeah, great film but really weak villain. By all means catch it when you can, as it still delivers everything you'd expect from a film featuring Robert Downey Jr. and co., but the big reveal of the film might leave you dissapointed. On a side note, I saw it in 3D, which probably didn't really add that much to the experience, but I don't rate films based on that alone, so feel free to splash out if you want to. But not on snacks. Fuck cinema food prices.
